The suit follows a legal action taken by Intel last March, in which the Santa Clara chip giant sought an injunction to prevent several former employees from joining rival Broadcom.

The former employees from Intel reportedly worked within the company's Level One Communications subsidiary, which develops transceivers, hub ICs, and telecommunications ICs. Intel acquired Level One early last year for $1.2 billion.

The ex-Intel employees in question were allegedly working on switching chips and Gigabit Ethernet transceiver technology.

In a separate legal action, Intel today also expanded its last remaining patent-infringement charge against Via Technology Inc., which focused on the Taiwanese company's alleged use of Intel technology in its chipsets produced for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s processors. Intel added two new patents to the suit that it claimed used Intel technology in AMD chipsets.

Intel last July reached a settlement with Via to drop patent-infringement charges on chipsets for Intel processors. At the time, Intel said it was continuing its patent claims against Via chipsets for AMD processors.